Hemp

ArseLtd

Stolen from a thread from 2002 by mfield.

Imagine a magical plant, the fastest growing on Earth, able to reach heights of 20 feet in a single growing season. Unaffected by pests, this plant actually rejuvenates the soil as it yields up to 10 tons per acre during two or three harvests a year. When harvested it can produce more than 25,000 useful products ranging from potent natural medicines, high-quality paper, durable clothing, construction paneling, easily digestible protein and a much cleaner burning fuel than the gasoline and diesel oil it replaces.

If this sounds like a pipe dream, you're close to the truth. But you might wonder what reality censor has been editing history when you learn that this miracle plant not only exists but has been used in most of these applications by human communities worldwide for at least 10,000 years. Until, that is, its recent prohibition as a "dangerous substance."

The danger, of course, is that the big papermaking, pharmaceutical, chemical and agro-transnationals would lose billions - perhaps even face bankruptcy - if hemp was returned to its former role as this planet's pre-eminent agricultural crop and most important industry for more than 3,000 years.

From more than 1,000 years before the crucified Christ drank a hemp mixture provided by his followers until 1883, cannabis hemp - or marijuana - produced most of humankind's fiber, fabric, lighting oil, paper and medicines. The broad-leafed plant also served as a primary source of protein for wild and human lives.

"This plant can save the Earth," declares Jack Herer, whose exhaustively researched and fabulously illustrated book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, is turning skeptics into a growing grass-roots movement from Kansas to Ucluelet.

"Hemp is by far Earth's premier, renewable natural resource," Herer maintains. He's even offered $10,000 to anyone who can successfully dispute his claim. There have been no takers.

Running through the research, a powerful Alice-In-Wonderland feeling of bizarre displacement steals over the reader. It's not that Herer's claims are preposterous. On the contrary, they are so meticulously documented reality as we've been taught it starts to hang askew. Quite quickly it becomes shockingly apparent that one of the single most common threads woven through the fabric of world history has been largely snipped from North American memories.

Charming 19th century illustrations show American farmers going forth to sow hemp; entire communities rejoicing in bountiful harvest. "Whole families came out together to harvest the hemp fields at the height of the flowering season all over the world for thousands upon thousands of years," Herer relates, "never dreaming that it would one day be banned from the face of the Earth, in favor of fossil fuels, timber and petrochemicals."

One of the oldest cultivated crops, hemp is the earliest known woven fabric beginning approximately 10,000 years ago about the same time as potters began shaping clay. In most of the world, 80% of all clothing, linens, tents, rugs and drapes were made from hemp until the 20th century. While water-intensive cotton cultivation accounts for half of all pesticide use, hemp requires no intensive irrigation. Because hemp has no natural enemies means it can be grown without pesticides - and without chemical fertilizers in most soils.

Throughout the 1600s, colonial governments in Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Ontario ordered all farmers to grow hemp seed. In England, full British citizenship was bestowed on immigrants who could grow cannabis; fines were often imposed against those who refused.

Herer also points out - and here the vertigo gets really dizzying - that cannabis was legal tender in most of the Americas from 1631 until the early 1800s. For over 200 years, Americans could pay their taxes with hemp.

By 1850, the U.S. Census Bureau counted 8,327 hemp plantations - minimum 2,000 acres - growing cannabis for cloth, canvas and cordage. In addition, says Herer, tens of thousands of smaller farms and perhaps hundreds of thousands of family plots were used to grow this valuable crop.

For thousands of years virtually all good paints and varnishes had been made from organic hemp or linseed oil. Tall ships roamed the oceans of the globe with sails and rigging made from hemp. Hemp oil for lighting was replaced by whale oil in the 1870s, and by kerosene in 1959 - with all the carnage which followed.

In one of the most delicious ironies in the annals of publishing, previous editorial deadlines led Popular Mechanics to hail hemp as the "NEW BILLION-DOLLAR CROP" soon after it was declared illegal by the U.S. government in 1937. The invention of a hemp threshing machine had, the editors of this influential magazine announced, solved "a problem more than 6,000 years old" by replacing the laborious task of stripping hemp fiber from the stalk with a fast, untiring machine. As important as the invention of the "cotton gin" used to gather cotton, this revolution in hemp harvesting could replace that water and pesticide-intensive crop at a manufacturing cost of just a half-cent per pound.

The editors of Popular Mechanics saw a fantastic opportunity unfolding which would create enormous profits from paper making, drastically cut fiber imports and provide thousands of new "American" jobs.

Hemp seemed too good to be real. The plant's long roots break up the soil, reinvigorating and reclaiming land abandoned to thistles and "quack grass."

Calling hemp "the standard fiber of the world," the popular mechanics pointed to the fast-growing weed's "great tensile strength and durability." Noting that hemp was already used to produce more than 5,000 textile products ranging from ropes to fine laces, they reminded readers that the plant's woody "hurds" (which remain after the fiber has been removed) "contain more than 75% cellulose and can be used to produce more than 25,000 products ranging from Cellulose to dynamite."

MORE BELOW.......

ArseLtd

But the hemp harvesting machines never went into mass-production. As researcher Shan Clark notes: the introduction of the first synthetic fiber - nylon, the patenting of the polluting sulfide paper-making process enabling pulp mills to use trees, the first successful use of machinery to separate hemp's long fibers from the cellulose hurd and the outlawing of hemp as "marijuana" all occurred simultaneously.

Forty years later, the Ford administration eliminated the threat to the powerful pharmaceutical transnationals by effectively outlawing further research into the medicinal properties of hemp.

The risk was real. By 1976, more than 60 therapeutic compounds had been developed from hemp - which for 3,000 years had been the most used medicine in the world. From 1842 to 1900 cannabis made up half of all medicine sold in the U.S.; in 1839, the Royal Academy of Science stated that the medicinal use of marijuana was as important to western medicine as "the discovery of antibiotics."

Hemp's healing powers are legendary. Poultices, THC and Cannabidohl extracts and other hemp preparations have been used to successfully treat asthma, glaucoma, many types of tumors, nausea, epilepsy, gonorrhea, herpes, rheumatism and anorexia - as well as high blood pressure, insomnia, migraines and stress - without the drastic side-effects of pharmaceuticals based on such dangerous and often addictive substances as mandrake, henbane and belladonna.

After reviewing extensive medical testimony, the U.S. Drug-busting department's own administrative law judge, Francis Young, concluded that "marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." (sic) If cannabis-derived medications were once again made legal, they could replace up to half of the synthetic drugs used in prescriptions.

Hemp also threatens the hegemony of the petro-chemical transnationals profiting heavily from a worldwide hydrocarbon economy. According to Herer, hemp is "50 times richer in biomass than any other plant used to replace petroleum-based fuels." Through a high-heat process known as pyrolsis, the much cleaner-burning hemp can be converted into charcoal, fuel oil, gas or liquid methanol with a 95.5% feed-to-fuel efficiency. Hemp seeds contain large quantities of oil which can be used as motor oil or burned in diesel engines.

Using hemp as a "halfway house" to help break our planet-ravaging petroleum dependency could also spark a return to large-scale hemp cultivation for food. The most natural compound closest to plasma, readily digested hemp seeds are also an important feed source for domestic and wild animals - especially millions of migratory birds on the decline worldwide as their feeding grounds are poisoned and paved over.

The seeds contain only trace amounts of mind-altering tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The bugaboo of hemp production, THC-free strains of hemp have been developed in Europe where France, Italy, Spain are once again growing hemp for pulp.

In terms of deforestation and mutagenic contamination. papermaking remains hemp's biggest single contribution to a commercial realignment which could overnight begin turning this planet away from ultimate catastrophe.

Until this century, 70 to 90 percent of all the world's paper came from hemp. Books, bibles, paper money, newspapers - all were made from hemp. One of North America's first pulp mills was started by Benjamin Franklin using hemp to make paper. Hemp paper and artist's canvas withstands heat, mildew and insects. While conventionally acid-bleached papers fall apart within 10-20 years, books printed on hemp paper have remained sound for centuries.

Hemp not only provides far superior paper, but is a much more efficient pulping plant than precious old growth trees chain-sawed to make paper bags and toilet paper. Hemp contains 77 percent cellulose, compared to trees' 44- percent. Because hemp contains very little lignin, no toxic bleaches necessary to make high-grade paper. The mustard gas-derived chlorine used to delignify wood chips release spectacular quantities of some of the deadliest, most persistent substances known into our air and waterways, altering the genetic structure and sabotaging the immune systems of wild and human lives for generations to come.

As early as 1916, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released special bulletin #404, which stated that hemp could replace trees for making paper at a 4 to 1 margin in favor of hemp. Harvesting 10,000 acres of hemp, the official record stated, could replace the fiber equivalent of 41,000 acres of trees.

It's at this point that outrage seems the only possible response to the hemp revelations. Outrage and determination to put hemp, kenaf and other papermaking vegetation into big time production as quickly as possible.

Had bulletin #404 been heeded, we could have saved most of the rivers, bays and ancient forests ravaged by timber-pulp consortiums. Just seven runs of the Sunday New York Times consumes 525,000 trees - "that's 25 million trees," Herer points out, "to print one year's editions of the Sunday NY Times!" An acre of hemp produces four times the pulp fiber of an acre of trees - and does so two or three times a year, while the fastest- growing pulp tree "crops" take 50 to 80 years to mature.

While family-run hemp farms are saving Canada's remaining forests, a process called Environcore can make up for the increasing shortfall in good timber by using hemp fibers to make construction paneling strong enough to replace plywood and drywall.

Hemp can also eliminate the plastics used in making many products, such as synthetic carpets and PVC pipe.

Awareness is power. It's also more than half the prelude to transformation. Fifty-four years after hemp was renamed "marijuana" and outlawed by what amounted to a corporate-instigated witch-hunt, Tracey Chester-Bennet observes that "60 percent of the world's rainforests are gone, and with them thousands of species of flora, fauna and every description of animal, from the tiniest insect to entire cultures of human beings." As this hemp proponent says, "We now rest at the crucial turning point if we are to save this planet."

It's obvious to more than prospective Earth stewards that extensive hemp cultivation is one obvious North American solution to a host of our worst environmental ills.
In 1991 the U.S. government instituted the death penalty for anyone caught growing more than 30,000 cannabis plants



So what do you think, ten years later?

Diego Maradona

ArseLtd wrote: »

MORE BELOW.......

Where?

cocoshovel

ArseLtd wrote: »

So what do you think?

I dont.

Diego Maradona

ArseLtd wrote: »

So what do you think, ten years later?

It'll take 10 years to read it all

starbelgrade

Too long, didn't weed.

SafeSurfer

nah

Outkast_IRE

Diego Maradona wrote: »

Where?

up there

mauzo

Ask my arse

ArseLtd

Diego Maradona wrote: »

It'll take 10 years to read it all

Is that too long to get in your thanks whoring comment? Get a life.

dr.bollocko

Hey.

I totally figured out a way of adding more storm to riders on the storm.


Play this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI

And this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvRv-243Cmk

At the same time.

Blows your mind.

Jimoslimos

Hemp's healing powers are legendary. Poultices, THC and Cannabidohl extracts and other hemp preparations have been used to successfully treat asthma, glaucoma, many types of tumors, nausea, epilepsy, gonorrhea, herpes, rheumatism and anorexia - as well as high blood pressure, insomnia, migraines and stress - without the drastic side-effects of pharmaceuticals based on such dangerous and often addictive substances as mandrake, henbane and belladonna.

Sorry?? I'm willing to believe that cannabis and extracts from the plant may have some medicinal benefits, most notably in pain relief but 'used to successfully treat many types of tumors'?

Give me a break.

Diego Maradona

ArseLtd wrote: »

Is that too long to get in your thanks whoring comment? Get a life.

I'll dig up this thread in 2022 and let you know.

Wibbs

To be fair, why hemp(the non "maaaaan are you as fcuked up as me?" kind) isn't utilised more is a damn good question. It is one of the most versatile and least damaging of all crops. If we went hemp and turned away from that ecological bastard that is cotton we would make a difference to the planet. Ditto on the papermaking as the article/copypasta noted.

starbelgrade

dr.bollocko wrote: »

Hey.

I totally figured out a way of adding more storm to riders on the storm.
.

Interesting fact... when "Riders.. "was being recorded in the studio, one of the mics picked up a terrible hissing sound which potentially would have ruined the recording, but they decided to disguise it instead with some rain and thunder noises, which is why the sounds were added to the track.

ArseLtd

Diego Maradona wrote: »

I'll dig up this thread in 2022 and let you know.

Sure go on, you've nothing better to do

El Weirdo

I fucking hate The Doors.

General General

Even if you couldn't do f.u.c.k. all with it other than smoke it, it'd still be great...

SouthTippBass

ArseLtd wrote: »

Sure go on, you've nothing better to do

What are you so moody about?

danniemcq

SouthTippBass wrote: »

What are you so moody about?

did you not see what OP had to type out?

You'd be moody then too.

OP i'm all for your idea of using hemp (i have a few hemp tshirts and they are far nicer to wear than my others) for common use alas I also know AH and a 2 posts needed to start the thread?

You need to break it down into bitesize chunks (AHers often get distracted by shiney objects) and link it to full article on a blog.

simples

Sky King

El Weirdo wrote: »

I fucking hate The Doors.

I fcking love The Doors.

Starbelgrade, that's an interesting one... also if you listen carefully to that track you'll notice the vocals are double-tracked, and Jim is whispering the lyrics over the sung ones.

But anyway, hemp yeah. When I hear the word I think of the tree hugging terrorists who wear ponchos and have video boxes full of skins and tobacco strands... but maybe the crop has merit? It certainly sounds good. Is there any independent sources on it?

Or did all the, loike, big oil companies shut them down, maaaan.

fkface

Hemp for Victory advertisement of the 1940s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jokV8xlJTNE

Dyr

I'm with the hippies on this, hemp is (apparently) easier and cheaper to grow than cotton without the crappy environmental impact and is a superior fabric for clothing in many ways

Wibbs

Plus you can make fibreboard and even concrete from it, the oil is incredibly nutritious, it enriches the soil, grows pretty much anywhere, hell you can even make plastics out of it. It is truly daft why it's not used more. I'm not one for conspiracies, but the underutilisation of hemp does smack of vested interests.

AeoNGriM

Wibbs wrote: »

Plus you can make fibreboard and even concrete from it, the oil is incredibly nutritious, it enriches the soil, grows pretty much anywhere, hell you can even make plastics out of it. It is truly daft why it's not used more. I'm not one for conspiracies, but the underutilisation of hemp does smack of vested interests.

https://tomverenna.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/giorgio_tsoukalos_aliens.png?w=468

AnonoBoy

I had a hemp shirt once. My idiot housemate tried to smoke it.

Jester252

I was in a house made with hemp. A big problem with using hemp as a building material is that it needs to be bone dry when added which would kinda be hard to do in Ireland

Conall Cernach

Bambi wrote: »

I'm with the hippies on this, hemp is (apparently) easier and cheaper to grow than cotton without the crappy environmental impact and is a superior fabric for clothing in many ways

So why did cotton supplant it?

ArseLtd

Conall Cernach wrote: »

So why did cotton supplant it?

Same reason were not driving electric cars, vested interests. It's the ones with all the money that have the power.

Oranage2

I vote no - I'd be afraid that someone wearing a hemp jumper beside me on the bus would get me so high that I strip naked jump out the bus window and get hit by some on-coming truck.

El Weirdo

Oranage2 wrote: »

I vote no - I'd be afraid that someone wearing a hemp jumper beside me on the bus would get me so high that I strip naked jump out the bus window and get hit by some on-coming truck.

^This.

We can't discount the danger of this type of incident happening on an almost hourly basis.

ArseLtd

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZvFE53JzDk&feature=related

Mance Rayder

All these points and yet we all know that the op just wants to smoke it.

Anyway, I dont see why we dont use it for other, not so far out reasons.

ArseLtd

Mance Rayder wrote: »

All these points and yet we all know that the op just wants to smoke it.

I can smoke it. I can anytime. I just don't want a criminal record for it.

Cookie_Monster

The wikipedia page makes it sound well used, particularly in cars...

A mixture of fibreglass, hemp fiber, kenaf, and flax has been used since 2002 to make composite panels for automobiles. The choice of which bast fiber to use is primarily based on cost and availability. Various car makers are beginning to use hemp in their cars, including Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda, Iveco, Lotus, Mercedes, Mitsubishi, Porsche, Saturn, Volkswagen and Volvo. The Lotus Eco Elise has hemp in it. The Mercedes C-Class has up to 20 kg of hemp in each car.

Mance Rayder

El Weirdo wrote: »

^This.

We can't discount the danger of this type of incident happening on an almost hourly basis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwBDNrbfDds

The dangers of licking a hemp shirt are manifold.:pac:

TheStook

El Weirdo wrote: »

I fucking hate The Doors.

Why, may I ask?
OT, I agree, harmless,beautiful plant.

dttq

We can talk all we want about the benefits of hemp until the cows come home, the point is that we are not going to see it becoming legal. Mainly because of the stigma and unscientific views held by so many politicians and the electorate around the issue. Not to mention that most people don't realise alcohol is a drug, a dangerous drug in fact with more dangerous side effects and health issues surrounding it than cannabis. And yet

"That fella went out and got smashed over the weekend".

REACTION: Ha ha ha ha

Now

"That fella smoked some cannabis over the weekend"

REACTION: "Oh god no, how could he do that, I always thought he was a good person. Doesnt he not know he's taking a dangerous drug. Next thing you know he'll be shooting heroin in run down houses."

AngryHippie

When carbon trading settles in as a socio-economic, we'll have hemp coming out of our arses. That stuff sequesters it at a phenomenal rate.
Tricky bit bit is controlling it. Its name weed didn't come about because its easy to control.
Absolutely incredible plant though, so many uses.
Its comeback is inevitable. And I don't even smoke it (anymore)

Tomk1

Oranage2 wrote: »

I vote no - I'd be afraid that someone wearing a hemp jumper beside me on the bus would get me so high that I strip naked jump out the bus window and get hit by some on-coming truck.

This is an example of the misconceptions from the properganda that the cotten & paper-mill industries made, calling Hemp (non-THC) = marijuana, that an ultracrepidarian would make.

Thanks OP, I read all of your post.
The only way I see this grown, is as a non-THC GM plant renamed a different product, away from the stigma that the Hemp name has, ie being associated with dopeheads & hippie clothes...queue snigger snigger from someone wearing canvas jeans

danniemcq

AngryHippie wrote: »

When carbon trading settles in as a socio-economic, we'll have hemp coming out of our arses. That stuff sequesters it at a phenomenal rate.
Tricky bit bit is controlling it. Its name weed didn't come about because its easy to control.
Absolutely incredible plant though, so many uses.
Its comeback is inevitable. And I don't even smoke it (anymore)

Is that why you are AngryHippie now?

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

The wikipedia page makes it sound well used, particularly in cars...

Cheech and Chong did it years ago too. That was an amazing documentary

Sunnyisland

LUKE ‘MING’ FLANAGAN wore a Louis Copeland suit made out of hemp in the Dáil chamber this morning to highlight the 10 year anniversary of his campaign to have cannabis legalised.
A spokesperson for Louis Copeland confirmed that it was the first time the high-end tailor had created a suit made out of hemp.
Speaking to theJournal.ie, the TD for Roscommon-Leitrim South said that he had bought the material outside of Ireland but that the suit had been made in Dublin. “If I could have purchased it here, I would have,” he said.
The hemp suit is “very comfortable, excellent material, and it’ll be my attire for many an occasion from now on,” said the TD.
http://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=luke%20ming%20flanagan%20hemp%20suit&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CBsQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thejournal.ie%2Fluke-ming-flanagan-wears-hemp-suit-in-the-dail-275244-Nov2011%2F&ei=H5y7TuHlHNGHhQfi4syhBw&usg=AFQjCNHJUcmBxV7_jE5aoO06bcXb-k5B4A. Ming is all for it :-)

(This was last year)

Conall Cernach

ArseLtd wrote: »

Same reason were not driving electric cars, vested interests. It's the ones with all the money that have the power.

That argument doesn't hold up as according to the OP we were all growing and using hemp for thousands of years before we switched to cotton. We don't switch to electric cars because they are more expensive, more awkward and are less flexible. That's the opposite of what it is claimed happened with cotton. We apparently switched from something cheap and altogether fantastic to a more expensive and crappier product. It doesn't ring true.

crazy cabbage

It should simply be made legal and should be used.

How does one go about its legalisation though?

Wibbs

Conall Cernach wrote: »

That argument doesn't hold up as according to the OP we were all growing and using hemp for thousands of years before we switched to cotton. We don't switch to electric cars because they are more expensive, more awkward and are less flexible. That's the opposite of what it is claimed happened with cotton. We apparently switched from something cheap and altogether fantastic to a more expensive and crappier product. It doesn't ring true.

Now I'm going from memory here so... IIRC it's pretty much down to the US of A and vested interests and other issues there. EG Randolph Hearst the publishing magnate was also a heavy investor in forestry. Now much of that was being grown for paper production. Hemp was a direct competitor for that market so Hearst wanted it out of the market and with the power of the media could do this. The lobbyists for the southern cotton states were also heavily vested in having hemp removed from the market. Even oil producers and the petrochemical industry on the back of them saw hemp as a competitor. In a culture of industrial "barons" like the the US was competition was often squeezed out.

There were practical issues too. Cotton harvesting was easier to mechanise in them days. Mechanised hemp harvesting never really took off at the time. That put a lot of people off. Storing hemp can be more troublesome too as it's more prone to rot than cotton. It also requires more bleaching(which isn't as hippie green). It also pongs a bit in it's unprocessed state and removing that used to be tricky back in the day.

There are a lot of reasons why it;s not as used today. Many of those reasons are vested interests, followed by practical things. Today it's not used so much, because the existing machinery is geared up for other products and it still has that inaccurate connection with getting monged. The hemp we're discussing has very very little of the THC of the Indica variety. Teeny amounts. It also has a different growth habit, leggier taller. You'd need to smoke an acre of the stuff to get the same bang as one pull on skunk.

Tzar Chasm

Whilst I agree that hemp is a brilliant product and we should be utilising it much more I have to correct people on the percieved Cotton 'conspiracy'

The industrial revolution was spearheaded by Cotton, the reason cotton acquired such a masive market share was that compard to Hemp or Flax it was far far simpler to industrialise the processing of it. remember that england could grow hemp and flax at the time but still chose to import cotton to process in its mills.

I do think its time to reevaluate all aspects of the Hemp prohibition and come up with some realistic policies

Nothingbetter2d

ArseLtd wrote: »

Sure go on, you've nothing better to do

no he doesn't :mad: Nothingbetter2do doesn't swing that way

Stiffler2

crazy cabbage wrote: »

It should simply be made legal and should be used.

How does one go about its legalisation though?

it'll never happen due to communist Ireland.
You're told whats what and that's it

uch

Won't be long till it's grown again, our German friends want it legalized so once it happens there sure we'll be next

ryoishin

ArseLtd

Jimoslimos wrote: »

Sorry?? I'm willing to believe that cannabis and extracts from the plant may have some medicinal benefits, most notably in pain relief but 'used to successfully treat many types of tumors'?

Give me a break.